Saturday, September 22, 2007

Having children seriously reduces the amount of gaming one gets to do.They're really worth it, but it's a big impact. That's all well andgood to say, but let's see some numbers.

First of all, to correct for annual events and the like, I looked at asliding window of 365 days. Prior to having kids, it was somewhatvariable, but going into 2004 it was pretty steady at around 550 gamesevery 365 days. Then, the drop. In the first year of my daughter'slife, I fell below 400 games/year and it gradually climbed back up toabout 450 when my son came along. Let me tell you, the second is abigger impact than the first, and the numbers bear me out, both as apercentage and as an absolute value. In the first year of my son'slife, the rate fell to 266/year and hasn't recovered much since. So:

First child: 30% drop (then up 10% after 2 years) (-150 games/year)

Second child: 40% drop (-175 games/year)

On the flip side, my daughter is ranked 4th among people I play themost games with for the year so far (in the top 75 overall), afterthree game night regulars. And that's only games played according tothe essentially correct rules, and to completion. With her, currentlyage 3, the big hits are Go Away Monster!, Monza, Who Lives Where? andany "daddy game" she can get her hands on. Plus, she's become a verygood rules explainer. The other day she taught me the full rules toKarambolage, exactly correctly and very clearly. Hopefully, as shegets older the interest will remain.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

In past years, I've posted about what the "hot games" (even if myopinion didn't line up) were at the Gathering. Here's my list of whatI perceived as having a lot of people talking about it and playing it.

Notre Dame. Almost universally, when I asked people "What haveyou played and loved?", this was the first response. There wereseveral copies at the event which meant it was easy to get a chance toplay, and there were often multiple copies in play. That said, therewere people who weren't totally impressed, and the buzz around thisone wasn't of the magnitude of Power Grid a few years ago, andcertainly not of Puerto Rico, back in 2002.

Descent. This was a bit of a surprise, since it's so differentfrom most of the other games played at the Gathering. But, this gotplayed a great deal, often with 2 or 3 games going simultaneously. Iheard some went as long as 8 (!) hours. I played twice, neither over3 hours, and both were a lot of fun.

Race for the Galaxy. This didn't get as much play, becausethere were only two prototypes, but most who played it liked it a lot,and everyone I spoke to thought the art was stunning.

Wikinger. This got a lot of play, with reasonably positivereactions. I heard from several people that the advanced version isbetter, which I did not try.

Caylus Magna Carta. There was only one copy (maybe 2?), but itwas almost universally positively received with most of the commentssimilar to mine.

Pillars of the Earth. This got a lot of play and was generallyquite well received, but it was almost never at the very top ofpeople's lists of top games they played.

Through the Ages. I didn't get to play this, but it saw a fairamount of play, and the reactions from those who did seemed to beextremely positive in general. At least a couple people declared ittheir favorite game ever.

Zooloretto. This got a lot of play at the beginning, and somecontinued play later, and was well liked, but not by everyone.

Thurn und Taxis Expansion. This also got a lot of playthroughout the week and was often on people's "top lists".

Colosseum. There was one copy of this and it got played a lot,and was well liked in general, but it also seemed to rairely make itnear the top of people's lists. A lot of the comments around thisseemed to express roughly, "it deserves a few more tries before I havea final opinion".

Arkadia. This didn't get played much at all until late in theGathering, when both the copies there were often continuously in play.Most people liked it and several said it was among the best.

Objet Trouves. Another "showed up late" hit, this party gamegot a lot of play in the last few days and was mostly well liked bythose who played.

A few other games that had reasonably positive buzz, but of lower overall magnitude: Huang Di, Phonecia, Quirkle, Animalia. I'm sure there were others that I didn't play that got some positive buzz, but I don't recall them now.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Of the new-to-me (and mostly new-since-Essen) games I've played, Ibroke them down into three categories: Buy, Maybe and No. Withinmaybe there's some more likely than others. Several of the "No"games are quite good, just not for me.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Guatemala Cafe: Not bad, but didn't impress me. Somehow reminded me of Santiago, which I also wasn't so fond of, but that may be superficial.

Notre Dame: Has that "great" feeling. It will take a few more plays to be sure, but midway through the first turn it's got that feeling. Interesting options, engaging. It's got a little bit of multi-player-solitaire quality, but if you (like me) don't think that's so bad, this is really worth a try.

Animalia: Oh what a shame this isn't generally available. The art is spectacular and the game is a really good filler.

Wikinger: Didn't do it for me. A lot of people seem to like it more than I do. A bit to calculating without enough fun.

Thurn & Taxis: For Power and Glory: Not so much an expansion as a different (but similar) game that can be played with many of the same components. If you like standard T&T, you'll probably like this, but it's different enough to feel like a distinct game, even if they have many similarities.

Caylus Magna Carta: All of the good parts of Caylus, without all of the length. This is great.

Monday, April 2, 2007

I took my daugther down to the gaming area to say hi to some peopleand introduced her to Friedemann Friese, the famous green-haired gamedesigner. She was a bit cautious at first, but was clearly fascinated.

When I took her back up to the room, she told my wife: "I sawFriedemann with his green hair. I was a little bit scared, but Iwanted to play his game."

The next morning, when we went downstairs again, he wasn't around andshe asked, "Where is Friedemann with his green hair?" Finally, thismorning when we went downstairs, he was there and she declared,"There's Friedemann all the way over there. Let's go over there."

For the first few days of the Gathering, we're here in Columbus withthe kids, doing fun local things and not so much gaming. Soon, thekids will visit Grams and I'll do a lot of gaming. So, a quick reviewof non-gaming and the small number of games I've played:

Non-games

COSI: The Columbus children's/science museum is great for kids. Highly recommended.

Graeter's: Delicious Ice Cream, highly recommended for children and adults.

Polaris: Every chain store and restaurant in existence gatheredinto one place. Mimi's Cafe is pretty good.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Over on BGG, a cool simple idea was discussed: Create a card for eachgame you own, and use it as a sort of "card catalog" of your games, oreven as a way of deciding of what game to play. Tom Kiehl made href=http://www.superpowernosissies.com/games/idkwdywtp/>a very cooltool, that was href=http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/153521>extensivelydiscussed. It automatically generates these cards from your BGGcollection.

An example sheet of 4

Unfortunately, the cards are less image focused than I'dwant, and I wouldn't want to deal with printing on labels and applyingthem to some other material for hundreds and hundreds of games. So, Idecided to write my own card generator, with some changes.

Just the Knizia games in my collection

First, I made the image as large as was plausible, automaticallyrotating the image if that would allow it to be larger. The only textinformation I wanted on the card was game name, number of players,time and designer(s). I also wanted to be able to override the gamename, not just the game image. Finally, I wanted them inexpensively,and in full high-quality color. So, I decided to print them four to a"page" and have the pages printed as 4x6 photos from Costco. I endedup having to do a fair amount of cutting, but less than applying 600+stickers. Overall, the result is very cool. Having one's entirecollection "in hand", physically, with all games being equal is usefuland fun.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Ok, my daughter doesn't actually play many games, but she thinks shedoes. She can really play "Go Away Monster!", fully by the rules.Heck, she even teaches other people the rules. She gets that one.But for most games, she really means she wants to play with the pieces.

She has a few favorites, such as Zick Zack, Gulo Gulo and Konig derMaulwurfel (which is really cute to try to hear a two-year-old say),but she enjoys Chess, Plumpsack, Cartagena, Sambesi, Dawn Under,Hamster Rolle, Kayanak, Villa Paletti, Face-It and a variety ofothers. Even if she's not quite there in terms of the rules of mostof the games, she understands the meta-game. She'll say "Let's play adaddy game!" and we'll proceed to peruse the shelves and she'll say"How about this one?" or "Maybe Gulo Guolo?" until we settle onsomething. We'll set it out, play with the pieces and clean it up.

But, the absolute icing on the cake is what she's taken to sayinglately when we're playing games. She'll turn to me, look me in theeyes, and declare "Daddy, I love playing games with you." I loveplaying games with her.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Fourteen yearso ago, I wrote the first web spider, back when the webwas small. It was called the Wanderer. Based off of it, I wrote thefirst web search engine, called "Wandex". It was not very good, butagain, the web was small. Within a year, numerous better web searchengines appeared. But, I am proud to have had the opportunity to befirst.

In the years since, I started a web analytics company, earned twodegrees, joined a hardware startup, and started a wireless locationcompany. Now, I have come full circle. In February, I started workat Google in Boston. The first month has been great and it's aremarkable company.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Since I do a lot of statistical analysis on the geek, one category ofquestions I get a lot are those about the "validity" of BGG Ratings.I finally got around to writing up a bunch of the notes on this. Enjoy.

How much a difference in rating/ranking is signifcant?

Well, depends what you mean, but I can answer the question I thinkmost people are asking better than this one. Tests for statistical"signifcance" are common, but most are based on assumptions that aresimply not valid for BGG ratings. This isn't to say such measures arecompletely useless, but they shouldn't be treated as the final word.The "ratings error" calculated in this manner is somewhere in theballpark of 0.2 points. For games with thousands and thousands ofratings, it is much lower, below 0.1. For games with fewer ratings,it's more like 0.5 or more. But, the assumptions that go into thesecalculations don't hold for BGG, so the numbers are even moreapproximate.

Easier to evaluate is what is the chance you (a random BGG user) willlike a particular game better than another game, given their relativeranks. For this, we don't need to make as many assumptions, as we canlook at the raw ratings distributions for those games. This still hassome issues with sample bias, but it's better. The answer is, knowingnothing else, if the games are 50 ranks apart, there's a 60% chanceyou like the higher ranked one better. If the games are 250 ranksapart, 70%. 700 ranks, 80%. 2000 ranks, 90%. Now, games at the verytop of the chart (roughly top hundred) actually give higherconfidence. If the games being compared are near the top of thechart, multiply the difference by a factor of about 2 to 5. So,roughly speaking, you're 70% more likely to like a game that's 50 to125 ranks higher, if it's near the top.

In other words, rankings/ratings are a rough estimate. They'refar from meaningless. Between two games, with no other information,you're more likely to like the one with a better rank. But, if one isin a genre you like better, by a designer you like better, from apublisher you like better or uses mechanics you like better, you'llprobably like it more, unless the other game outranks it by a fewhundred ranks.

Personally, I tend to look at game ranks in roughly 5 "star"categories: 1-100 (5 stars), 101-500 (4 stars), 501-1000 (3 stars),1001-2000 (2 stars) and 2001+ (1 star). If a game has a feature(designer, publisher, mechanic, theme, etc.) I'm especially fond of, Igive it another star or two. Games with features I tend to dislike,get docked a star or two. Ratings/reviews from trusted users mightbump it up or down one star, but for me, I don't find manyreviewers/raters who I can consistently trust. Then, if a game has 6or more stars, I probably buy it before playing. 5 stars, I activelyseek it out to try it. 4 stars, I'm happy to give it a try. 3 stars,I'm willing to give it a try. 2 stars, I have to be convinced. 1star, I avoid it. For me, it works.

Wouldn't the ratings be better/more accurate if we ignored ratings from inactive users?

They wouldn't be much different. In fact, they'd be only about asdifferent as you'd expect from any arbitrary reduction of sample size.I have not yet identified anything to suggest that older/inactiveusers ratings are in any substantial characteristic different fromthose of active/recent users.

What if we got rid of ratings that haven't been updated in a certain period

No substantial change, until you make it a really recent cutoff, atwhich point the "top" lists are all exclusively new games.

What if we just use the plain average instead of the Bayesian average, with a cutoff for minimum number of ratings?

No matter what value of cutoff you use, it introduces a large biastoward games that have just barely enough to make the cutoff. Infact, for any particular value of the cutoff, roughly 20% of the topgames (whether top 10, top 100, whatever) are very close to thecutoff. What this means is if you were to lower the cutoff a little,you add in a bunch of games that were arbitrarily removed by havingthe cutoff higher. If you raise the cutoff a little, you cut out abunch of games, equlaly arbitrarily. The Bayesian average provides a"soft" cutoff.

Actually, if you're willing to raise the cutoff up to about 500ratings, minimum, the effect goes away. That would leave only 422games rated on the geek.

What if we restricted it to people who have played at least 3 times?

Well, the average rating of games would go up a ton because peopledon't tend to play bad games that many times. Specifically theaverage rating would go up by nearly a point.

It would also introduce a big bias against longer games, introduce abias toward 2-player games and reduce the sample size dramatically, asmany fewer people log plays than submit ratings. Other than thoseshifts, many other results would remain very similar.

How about a "waiting period" before a game is rated/ranked?

Well, the Bayesian Average already has some of this effect. Thatsaid, there is a distinct, early ratings bump many games get. Thatis, when a game only has a few hundred ratings, it is often rated muchmore highly then when it has many hundreds or over 1000 ratings. Inparticular, it seems the average dropoff is about 0.3 points from 350ratings to "steady state", which sometimes takes till 1000 ratings ormore. Before 350 ratings, there's a lot of variability in theaverage.

What if we only count ratings from people who have rated, say, 300 games?

The top 11 games remain exactly the same, in slightly different order,despite what would amount to a sample destroying reduction in numberof raters. Neat.

Personal

Professional

I am a Engineering Director at Google. My team and I work on Search.

Previously, I was the CTO at an 802.11 location and security company, Newbury Networks in Boston. In June, 1999 I received my Masters degree from the MIT Media Lab. I graduated from MIT (undergraduate) in June, 1997, in physics. Prior to that I was CTO of net.Genesis from 1994 to 1996.